Various methods for producing a contact spacing converter (space transformer) are known. Within a device for electrical contacting, particularly touch-contacting, for an electrical device under test (DUT), particularly wafer, such contact spacing converters are used to create electrical paths that convert very small contact spacings into larger contact spacings. The contacts of an electrical device under test to be contacted can have very small center distances. In order to be able to touch-contact them, a contact spacing converter is required which has the electrical paths that has a very fine resolution of the center distances (grid dimension) of the contacts at one end, particularly in accordance with the DUT contact arrangement. On its other side, the contact spacing converter has a comparatively coarser resolution, so that it is possible to electrically contact additional components of the device in order to ultimately obtain a contact spacing that enables a testing device to be connected. Using the testing device, electrical current paths are connected which, along with the contact spacing converter, enable the DUT to be electrically checked for electrical functionality. The very fine resolution of the electrical paths can have center distances of the contacts between 20 μm and 500 μm, and the side of the contact spacing converter that is associated with the testing device (tester) can have a coarse resolution in the range between 200 μm and 2,600 μm. The known contact spacing transformers always contact a so-called contact head having spring contacts (bent wires, for example) that are used to touch-contact the DUT.
One noteworthy known contact spacing converter is a space transformer that is manufactured according to the wiring principle in which electrical wires perform the disentanglement (fine resolution to coarse resolution). Space transformers are also known in which electrical paths perform the disentanglement within a printed circuit board.
All known solutions have the drawback of very high costs resulting from their elaborate constructions and resulting long setup times. Due to its electrical characteristics and its construction, which must be set up manually, the design with wiring, which can be produced relatively quickly and flexibly, is not future-proof. The long wire connections lead to crosstalk, for example, and the manual construction can only be performed by highly trained employees, and the manual operation results in a relatively high error ratio.